Government has lost plot on land bill, say Opposition members of parliamentary panel

PTI|

Feb 27, 2018, 09.58 PM IST

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TMC leader Derek O'Brien, who is also a member of the panel, said the meeting was called off and even ruling BJP MPs were missing.

Opposition party members of Parliament's joint committee on a proposed land acquisition Act today said the government was not serious about the bill as members from the ruling BJP were skipping the panel's sessions.

The meeting of the Joint Committee on the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Second Amendment) Bill, 2015, was postponed due to lack of quorum, as only six out of the 31 members of the panel were present for discussions today.

"The moral of the story is that the bill is now dead. The government started this bill with a lot of fanfare but it is dead," an Opposition member said.

TMC leader Derek O'Brien, who is also a member of the panel, said the meeting was called off and even ruling BJP MPs were missing.

"They have lost the plot," O'Brien tweeted, adding that the panel, chaired by a BJP MP, was "woefully short of quorum".

Only six of the 31 members were present, he said. "Even BJP members ditch," he tweeted.

BJP MPs on the panel, however, said they were attending the meetings regularly, and asserted that the progress of its work to review the proposed legislation was satisfactory.

Opposition members claimed the panel had met only a few times.

The majority of the panel members are from the ruling BJP. Many of them claimed that barring a few misses, they were regular in attending the meetings.

MPs from several Opposition parties were skipping the meets, they claimed.

In May 2015, the bill was referred to the 30-member joint committee of Parliament after the government faced strong opposition from various political parties in the two Houses.